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2012 Singapore Grand Prix
The 2012 Singapore Grand Prix (formerly known as the 2012 Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix) is a Formula One motor race that took place at the Marina Bay Street Circuit in Marina Bay, Singapore on 23 September 2012 as the fourteenth round of the 2012 season. The race was the thirteenth time that a Singapore Grand Prix has been held, and the fifth time it has been a round of the Formula One World Championship. Lewis Hamilton will start the race from pole. Sebastian Vettel won the race, his second win of the season, after Hamilton's gearbox failed early in the race. Report Background After having served his one-race ban for causing a serious accident at the Belgium Grand Prix, Romain Grosjean returned to Lotus F1 for the race in Singapore. Ma Qinghua once again drove Narain Karthikeyan's car in the first free practice session at the Marina Bay circuit. Free practice The first practice session was held on Friday evening in damp conditions. It had rained on the circuit earlier in the day, but it started drying out as the session began. Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time of the session, five hundreths of a second faster than Lewis Hamilton. Although several drivers went off the circuit, they were able to rejoin without damage and the session was not stopped. By the time the second session began, the circuit was completely dry. Vettel was once again fastest, this time three tenths of a second faster than Jenson Button. The session was briefly stopped when Bruno Senna clipped a barrier coming out form under the grandstand at turn 19 before spinning to a halt at the next corner. Vettel topped the third and final session on Saturday evening, three-tenth faster than Hamilton. The session was stopped two minutes before schedule when Vitaly Petrov hit the wall at Turn 21, breaking his right-rear suspension and as a consequence, his Caterham stopped in the entrance to the pitlane and by doing so, blocked it causing a red flag until the session ended. Qualifying The first qualifying period saw several teams being caught out by the difference in performance between the harder prime tyres and the softer options, which was estimate to be up to a second and a half per lap. The end result was that several teams had to use up a set of soft tyres to guarantee a place in the second period. Williams' Bruno Senna clipped the wall on his final lap while faced with the threat of elimination, but made it through to the second period by a tenth of a second when Kamui Kobayashi failed to better his lap time. Vitaly Petrov out-qualified team-mate Heikki Kovalainen to start nineteenth, putting the Caterhams ahead of the Marussia duo of Timo Glock and Charles Pic. HRT once again locked out the final row of the grid, with Narain Karthikeyan out-qualifying Pedro de la Rosa for the second race in succession with a time that was over a second faster. De la Rosa started qualifying with the knowledge that he would receive a five-place grid penalty for the unscheduled gearbox change regardless of where he started, but as he qualified twenty-fourth and last, the effect of the penalty was negated. The second qualifying period started with Senna and Romain Grosjean crashing. While Grosjean was able to return the circuit and ultimately pit, Senna - who had once again hit the wall at Turn 19, and his third such crash at that corner - was eliminated on the spot. With his failure to set a lap time, he was relegated to seventeenth on the grid. At the end of the fifteen-minute session, Nico Hülkenberg was eliminated after finishing in eleventh, and later admitted that he felt he could have gone faster in the first sector. Kimi Räikkönen qualified alongside him in twelfth, ahead of Felipe Massa and Sergio Pérez. Scuderia Toro Rosso drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Éric Vergne had a quiet qualifying session, and ultimately finished fifteenth and sixteenth respectively. Mercedes elected to not take part in the final period of qualifying, allowing Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg to save a set of tyres and giving them the choice of which compound to start the race on. As a result, only eight drivers took part in the final ten minutes of qualifying. Lewis Hamilton prevailed, taking pole position by half a second from Pastor Maldonado. After consistently fast through free practice, Sebastian Vettel could only manage third overall, ahead of Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso, the latter of whom had admitted that he was not expecting to be fast during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend. Paul di Resta qualified sixth, ahead of Mark Webber, leaving Romain Grosjean as the eighth and final driver to set a time. Post-qualifying In an interview after qualifying, Lewis Hamilton publicly implored Pastor Maldonado to be careful during the start of the race, given the latter's reputation of reckless driving and frequent on-track incidents. Mark Webber, who is starting seventh on the grid, was quoted by the Daily Mail as warning Romain Grosjean to stay away from him at the start of his first race after being banned from taking part in the Italian Grand Prix. Classification Qualifying Notes: *Bruno Senna and Pedro de la Rosa were demoted five places for unscheduled gearbox changes. Race Notes: *Mark Webber had twenty seconds added to his time after he cut a corner in order to pass Kamui Kobayashi. *Charles Pic had twenty seconds added to his time after he was spotted overtaking another car while red flags were being shown in the final free practice session. Category:2012 Formula One race reports Category:Singapore Grand Prix Category:2012 in Formula One